The Hysterical Overreaction to Trump’s Taiwan Call

The problem isn’t what was said on the call itself. By all accounts, the discussion was the kind of routine post-election congratulatory call one might expect between democratically elected leaders of friendly nations. The concern is how others, most especially China, will react to the call. The speculation? Not well.

For a smart non-hysterical overview of the U.S.-Taiwan-China conundrum, read this from The Atlantic‘s David Graham. To oversimplify, the United States and Taiwan are strong trade partners, and the United States plays a crucial role in bolstering Taiwan’s defenses ($46 billion in arms since 1990, per Graham)—all of which bothers China, which considers Taiwan part of China. So the United States, Taiwan, and China have maintained since 1979 a delicate balance built on pretense. Trump’s call is undoubtedly a provocative challenge to that fragile co-existence.

Was it deliberate? This seems to be a chief concern of those criticizing the call. The short answer: We don’t know. Several top Trump advisers (John Bolton, Tom Cotton, among others) have long urged a less deferential posture toward the Chinese, particularly on Taiwan. Trump himself spent much of his campaign selling a more confrontational approach to China, especially on trade. Trump’s spokesmen have told reporters on background that the president-elect consulted his “team” before accepting the call. And the Taipei Times reported Trump’s “Taiwan-friendly campaign staff” set up the call. It’s possible Trump meant to send a signal by talking to Tsai.

Given all we know about Trump, however, it’s not hard to imagine Trump simply stumbling into this controversy. That certainly seems to be the working assumption of those criticizing the move. If that’s what happened, it’s cause for concern even for those of us who favor a new approach to China. Trump’s lack of foreign policy knowledge and his rash decision-making were primary reasons that many conservatives opposed him—including me. Beyond that, serious questions have been raised about Trump seeking to expand his business interests in Taiwan. Trump should address them. But isn’t it important for his critics, especially journalists, to actually know these things before the histrionics?

Apparently not. Within hours, the tone of the coverage was set. With virtually no actual reporting about what led to the call and what Trump might have intended by it, one news story after another focused instead on the possibly calamitous results from the break with precedent. The New York Times worried: “Donald Trump spoke with Taiwan’s leader, a striking break with nearly 4 decades of diplomatic practice,” conceding, “Mr. Trump’s motives in taking the call, which lasted more than 10 minutes, were not clear.” Max Fisher, who writes and edits “The Interpreter,” a New York Times foreign policy column, immediately offered a succinct response that would come to characterize the broader reaction of journalists and foreign policy elites: “oh my god.”

Breaking with past practice isn’t always cause for panic, however. Contrast the hysterical reaction to Trump’s phone call—and it’s worth remembering that it was a 10-minute phone call—with the fawning coverage of Obama’s decisions to cast aside bipartisan U.S. policy on Cuba and Iran. Obama’s moves were “bold” and “historic,” and he has been cast as a courageous and visionary leader willing to set the country on a new course.

The reality of what Obama was doing was jaw-dropping. The president of the United States was seeking rapprochement with a longtime enemy of the United States, a rogue state the State Department had labeled for years as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, a regime that had as a deliberate policy the targeting of U.S. troops overseas and is responsible for hundreds—perhaps thousands—of American troop deaths. To achieve better relations, the Obama administration would turn a blind eye to Iran’s terrorism, boost its businesses, provide billions of dollars that even Obama’s own secretary of state conceded would be used for terrorism and regional troublemaking, and, as the Obama himself conceded in an interview with NPR, agreed to a nuclear deal that would leave Iran with breakout times “almost down to zero” down the road. Obama did all of this even as his own administration repeatedly accused Iran of hosting al Qaeda’s “core pipeline”—that is, as Obama must know, Iran is a key hub for the terrorist organization that killed nearly 3,000 Americans inside the United States on 9/11.

In order to sell the policy, the president and his team repeatedly misled the American people—about secret talks with Iran, about IAEA side deals, about palettes of cash delivered to a longtime enemy.

You want a break from nearly four decades of diplomatic practice? This was it. And the result is clear: Iran is in a much better geostrategic position today, expanding its influence in the region and beyond, than it was in 2009, when Obama’s precedent-breaking diplomacy began. The fact that Obama did all of this deliberately is not exculpatory, it’s damning. And many of the journalists and foreign policy experts currently losing their minds over Trump’s phone call were amplifiers or cheerleaders of this departure from protocol.

We will certainly learn more about Trump’s phone call in the coming days. Some of that information might confirm the fears of those worried about Trump’s ad hoc style or his willingness to use his position to further his business interests. If it does, we’ll be happy to join his critics.

But we should wait for that information. And if you cheered Obama’s break from diplomatic practice, you might consider another line of attack on Trump’s.